Miss Edith Goes to Fenway Park

Miss Edith is not always an exemplary mate; I can be cranky and petulant and I have a tendency toward a certain baroque sloppiness in home décor. But The Most Ethical Man in the World, Notarius, loves me anyway, and proof of this is the trip we recently made to Boston, Massachusetts. Notarius had acquired two tickets to a Red Sox game – these are, I’m told, rather hard to come by – and so I found us a room in downtown Boston and we hopped into our motor vehicle (which we use so little it’s always sort of novel to be in it) and went north.

The Red Sox were playing the Detroit Tigers. I had prepared for attending the match – sorry, game – by packing carefully: I had an extra sweater in addition to my sweatshirt, and I’d selected what I felt was a near-perfect book to read while everyone around me swilled overpriced beer and screamed into each others’ ears: Peter Farrelly’s only novel, Outside Providence. It isn’t about Boston or baseball, no; but it was written by Mr. Farrelly some 20 years ago, before he became noted for making phenomenally stupid movies, and before he made his little valentine to the Red Sox, the Drew Barrymore-Jimmy Fallon movie Fever Pitch. It’s a slim paperback, Outside Providence, and I’d been meaning to read it for some time, and I thought, “This is perfect. It’s geographically appropriate, and if it gets trashed because someone spills a beer on it, I won’t mind so much.”

Miss Edith has not attended so many baseball games, almost certainly less than ten in her life, but she has brought a book to each and every one of them. Baseball is, shall we say, not among my passions. However, Notarius is an ardent follower of the game, and we’ve come to enjoy our method of enjoying the summertime sprees: he yells at the game and mutters when something goes wrong, and I pretty much ignore it all but occasionally pipe up, “Goddamnit, I thought these guys were ballplayers!” just to make it sound like I’m participating. As they say, every couple has a way of making things work.

So I was genuinely surprised when we reached the ninth inning of this Red Sox/Tigers game and I realized that I’d not even taken my book from my (red patent leather, thank you very much) purse. I’d been sitting there in miserably cold, damp Boston air, surrounded by people who may be nice in the real world but who, in the confines of the ballpark, came off as moronic assholes (save the nice British woman to my right, who was really quite charming and surprisingly enthusiastic about the game); one might have thought that Miss Edith would have been content to burrow into a book for a few hours. But it never came to pass. No: I stood when everyone else stood, to see what had happened when it looked like an outfielder had smashed his face into tiny bits trying to catch a ball; I clapped my hands when everyone else did, to show support of the team; I did everything one is supposed to do at a baseball game, for the most part. There were a few things I refrained from: I did not drink beer (damned if I’m going to pay those inflated prices for mediocre beverages and comestibles), I did not sing “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” and I did not do The Wave.

You can sue Miss Edith any time you wish, but there’s no gains to be had, I can advise you.

So I’d intended to be able to tell you something about Peter Farrelly’s Outside Providence by now, but I cannot; I still have not even opened it. I can tell you, however, that if you’re going to Fenway Park in late May, a wool sweater is advisable. Even with the extra gear I’d carried up to Boston, it was still unbelievably cold. I pity the people who attended last night’s game, when it was cold and raining, and I understand the Red Sox lost by something like 11 to nothing.